A Day Trip to Matera: The Ancient Cave City
Matera makes a perfect day trip from Puglia. If you're planning a road trip through the region, don’t miss Visiting Puglia: Salento Coast to Lecce.
An hour from Ostuni in Puglia, you’ll find Matera, just over the border in the region of Basilicata. It's technically a different region, but its food, dialect, and culture are closely tied to Puglia. It's also one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and worth making the time to see in person.
A City Carved From Stone
Matera is a city of sassi — homes, churches, and entire neighborhoods carved directly into the soft local rock. Over thousands of years, families dug into the stone, then built outward and upward as they grew, until the whole place became a maze where the streets are often the rooftops of the houses below. Standing in it, it’s hard to keep track of distance. Everything is stacked, layered, and ancient.
What makes the history so remarkable is how recent people inhabited it. Into the 1950s, thousands of families were still living in these caves without running water, electricity, or plumbing, often alongside their animals for warmth. Conditions were so poor that Matera was once called "the shame of Italy," and the government eventually relocated tens of thousands of residents to new housing nearby. Within a couple of generations, the city went from that to a UNESCO World Heritage site and a Hollywood filming location. If it looks familiar, you may have seen it in the opening of the most recent James Bond film or in The Passion of the Christ — the landscape's resemblance to ancient Jerusalem has made it a favorite for filmmakers.
We signed up for a guided tour and I'd absolutely recommend it. Our guide, Gaetano, was born and raised in Matera, and the history he shared brought the whole place to life. He walked us through Sasso Caveoso, the more-visited of the two cave districts, explaining how people actually lived here, how the rainwater collection system worked (it's the reason Matera earned its UNESCO status), and how the city went from abandoned to thriving. There’s a lot of history to absorb, and having someone from the community tell it made all the difference.
Note: Currently, Gaetano’s walking tour isn't being offered at the moment, but I'm leaving the link here in case that changes. If you're lucky enough to catch it, he's a fantastic guide.
Cocktails at Zipa Cafe
After the tour, we spent the rest of the afternoon getting lost in the streets on our own, which is really the best way to experience Matera. We stumbled upon Zipa Cafe, an incredibly cool cocktail bar carved right into the rock. We found seats outside, shaded from the hot sun beneath the stone. We kept it simple with spritzes and charcuterie, but Zipa is actually known for its craft cocktails, made with their own house-produced gin called Balena. If you're more of a cocktail person than I was that afternoon, this is the spot for it. On our way out, we found a local artisan selling stamped images of Matera on canvases and bags — a great souvenir to remember this unique place by.
